Sunday, 27 May 2012

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Journey 2 feels like an adventure re-tread of many books, serials and borrows freely from many monster movie adventures as we see our stars scooting around on the back of bees encountering larger than life animals and other creatures of nature.

The story revolves around Sean (Hutcherson), the angst ridden teenager who has to co-exist with his mum's new husband Hank (Johnson) on a journey to find Sean's absent grandfather, Alexander (Caine) who has mysteriously disappeared believed to be on an island.

As they crash land near the last known point of contact with Alexander, they enter the island and encounter big creatures that dwarf them by comparison - now they could have conceivably eked out tension by leaving the reveal of the grandfather for sometime. Yet Alexander appears almost immediately, and joins them on this quest for more adventure - where the true quest should be to find a basis for a family.

The script is weak, yet in Caine and Johnson, they were lucky enough to find two actors of genuine charisma and humour who are able to exert a bit of character into any scene albeit flat ones; even Luis Guzman can entertain and hold your attention with any role.

The special effects are not that great, and would not look out of place in a 3D adventure ride at a theme park - yet it will have enough thrills to entertain children.

A mistake of the film's marketing was to have us believe that it was meant to be for children of all ages, where the term pre-adolescence would be a fairer assessment.

The sequel to the box-office hit, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, starring Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) and Michael Caine is full of fun and released on DVD, Blu-Ray and Triple Play out on Monday 28th May